Has Apple Bitten Off More Than It Can Chew?

July 29, 2008

By BRIAN X. CHEN

Apple has staked its reputation on tight control of a few carefully designed, faultlessly executed products.

Now, as Apple expands its reach from computers into music, video, consumer electronics and phones, it's getting harder and harder for the company to make sure all of its products "just work," as its marketing slogan goes. Its growing army of customers is getting more difficult to satisfy, and they're finding a host of new problems, ranging from tapeless camcorder issues to buggy iPhones.

"Apple has always seen that their benefit is being a closed environment, but they've now put themselves in the position where a lot more people want to look at them, and those people are coming from domains where they're more used to openness, flexibility and more open systems," said Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney. "That's the crisis they're going to have to face this coming year: Am I going to continue being closed and controlled or am I going to open myself up?"

The list of customers Apple needs to keep happy is ever-growing: iPhone users, iTunes shoppers, iPod owners, MobileMe subscribers and Mac users. And the items all add up to one question: Has Apple bitten off more than it can chew?

The company's towering list of recent problems (collected from reader e-mails, forums and media reports) spell out deterioration of the general Apple user experience:

And on top of that, enraged Apple customers are uniting in Apple support forums -- particularly in the MobileMe and iPhone 3G threads. Some of the country's most famous tech columnists are displeased with Apple's recent behavior, too. A quick Google search of "Apple + it just works" bring up mockeries of the slogan in top results with headlines reading, "It just works indeed," and, "Will MobileMe 'just work' for the rest of us?"

Such remarks indicate an erosion in the pride that has often been associated with being an Apple customer. And they spell trouble for a company that has long tried to distinguish itself from the buggy complexity of its chief competitor: Microsoft.

One reason more Apple customers are complaining is simply that there are more Apple customers than ever before. And, while an angry minority may be particularly vocal, the majority of the company's customers continue to be happy with its products.

That's why some, like Crunchgear writer John Biggs, have called Apple's success a curse. As Apple has grown to absorb as much as 20 percent of the U.S. computer market, its customers are getting more diverse and harder to satisfy.

"Apple, it seems, now has to deal with the average Joe and the average Joe is considerably more cranky than some turtle-necked fanboys in their loft in SoHo," Biggs wrote.

And yet, Apple hasn't changed any of its ways. The corporation continues to operate behind closed doors. When Apple makes mistakes, such as the MobileMe e-mail debacle, the company puts up a vague status message -- while 20,000 users are left without e-mail access for a week. To make matters worse, Apple downplays the problem as affecting a meager "1%" of users.